The Last
by Tris'sLightningQuill
Summary: Most women Abhorsen died young, or came to their post well-advanced in life. Many took lovers.....but obviously they were not as stupid as she. The line customarily passed from aunt to nephew, from distant cousins, from anywhere but mother to child.


Mogget was not being any help. Whether it was the bell on his collar causing his mind to wander in her perpetual drowsy call, or sheer feline perversity, Sabriel couldn't say. Perhaps it didn't matter, but she would have liked the help.

She had directed the Sendings to bring her all they could find concerning female Abhorsens, from second-hand biographies which were no help at all, to faded, blotched journals that were vague at best and maddening to pick through. And then she cataloged the vast Library of Abhorsen's house herself, for all the good it did. She came out sneezing and irritable from the dust and hardly any the wiser. She indulged in just a little self-pity, fuming under her breath at the hopelessness of it all, and set to combing through battered manuscripts, fragmented notes and water-stained memoirs. For the namesake of organization, she took tedious notes, and cross-referenced the lot--what she got through, anyway--and felt herself close to despair. Of the _relevant_ material she'd found, nearly all was utterly useless. Oh, there'd be an allusion here and a passing reference there, but nothing concrete. No failsafe, no guide, no _rules_ she could follow. Most women Abhorsen died young, or came to their post well-advanced in life. Many took lovers, and one or two had been married, but obviously they were not as stupid as she. The line customarily passed from aunt to nephew, from distant cousin to distant cousin, from anywhere but mother to child. Perhaps [that] was the very reason why. Sabriel ground the palm of her hand into her eyes to squash frustrated tears. Her empirical habits did not bother her so much when it was just her own foolish skin skirting the coals…or currents. The next-to-nothing records here were counterproductive, if anything. Perhaps, such records would be kept safe and cataloged in the great Library of the Clayr. Perhaps…perhaps she really _was_ the first. And with that thought, it finally hit home, for all the play that she'd accepted it. All the signs were there. She laughed bitterly. There could be no running away from the terrible truth any longer. Sabriel cursed softly beneath her breath. She had no wish to find out if there was more truth in her nightmares than phantasms were wont.

Touchstone found her still at the big oak desk in the study when night fell, all the papers scattered in a mess before her. Se slumped against the great eagle-clawed chair, crying silently He set the mild tea he brought on a clear patch of desktop, and bent to kiss her inflamed eyelids one by one.

"Well?" he asked softly, idly scanning a diary entry of Deana, the thirty-sixth Abhorsen, the summer before her death.

Sabriel swiped a hand across the tabletop, sending parchment flying with a dry crackle. She shook her head. "It's useless." she mumbled petulantly and drew in a deep breath that was only a little shaky. She closed her eyes for a steady count of ten, tapping on the table so that her chivalrous husband did not interrupt. _Give fear its due--it will run its course, and be spent._ Meditating so upon the mantra her father had first introduced when she was just old enough to venture upon the River, she was able to answer in a steady, firm voice. "I suppose I'll have to try something else." She refused to meet his eyes, refused to let him see the words unspoken there--_I'm so afraid_. It would only seem like whining. Her husband already knew everything, everything from the horrible secret that wasn't a secret at all, to the fears she could not put words to. Like gorge rising, there came again the awful knowledge that would not go away, the remembrance that she herself had been born dead.

"And what is that?" Touchstone asked.

Sabriel reached for a sheet of heavy grey vellum from the cedar wood box she had overturned in that moment of childishness. Slowly, she drew the tiny, plain bodkin from her belt-buckle and pricked the second finger of her left hand. Once more. Once more into Death would have to do. She had to walk open-eyed into her nightmares; she had to learn what to do with herself. She lifted her hands and watched three liquid rubies fall on the heavy skin-paper. As the bloodstain spread, turning the vellum a pallid lavender, she began carefully to fold it into a neat little paper boat.

"I think," she said softly, intent on her work, now glowing with inlaid Charter-marks, "I think I'm going to have to go and talk to Mother."


End file.
